


Fatherhood

by Pickwick12



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Father Figures, Fluff but make it analytical, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-16 07:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29203704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pickwick12/pseuds/Pickwick12
Summary: No longer a one-shot. Nonlinear look at the contrast in the ways Martin & Gil have influenced and shaped Malcolm over the years.(Better than this summary, I hope)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	1. A Million Ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of the case at Claremont, Malcolm does something he thought he would never do.
> 
> (Pure wish fulfillment for what I wished had happened between Malcolm and Martin at the end of 2x4 and how I would have loved to see Malcolm and Gil process it.)

The basement of Claremont is as good a place as any. 

Malcolm sizes up his father, handcuffs in hand. There’s a moment of hesitation, and then he’s holding on, both holding and being held. 

His father is still taller, a trick of the universe that contributes to how much he still feels like a little boy. Their last hug was twenty-three years ago. He could name the date.

A part of him fights, then lets go, a calmness overtaking him, something easing inside him that hasn’t eased since that fateful night. A voice in his head whispers hate for himself, hate that this still feels like completion. But that voice is drowned out by the sheer comfort of being in a place that feels familiar and loving.

There are many things his father could say that would rip him out of the moment, but he doesn’t say any of them. He just holds Malcolm the way he always did, arm around his back and hand cradling head to shoulder. Martin had always been more physically affectionate than his wife. The memories flood back to Malcolm.

Finally, Malcolm pulls away, but his father keeps hold, taking his son’s face in his hands. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” Malcolm wants to pull it back as soon as he says it, not because it’s a lie, but because the truth hurts too much. 

“I know,” Martin answers as Malcolm slips the cuffs around his wrists. “I know, and that’s what matters.”

—

Malcolm is quiet on the ride back to the precinct. That’s unusual enough, but when he says he’d like to go home and debrief the next day, Gil stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Malcolm, I know this was a heavy case for you. I can’t stop you, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone until we talk about it. If you’d rather talk and have a drink at your loft, we can.” Gil speaks quietly, and Malcolm knows he’s being considerate so he doesn’t alert half the precinct.

“Fine,” Malcolm sighs. Truthfully, he doesn’t really want to be alone with his confusion. Gil drives him home. Being next to the cop holds more than 20 years of familiarity, and Malcolm feels himself uncoiling—slightly. Gil’s car had once been his safest place.

Once at the loft, Malcolm wordlessly unlocks the door and goes immediately to his alcohol stash. He’s no alcoholic; losing control is abhorrent to him. But his mother makes sure his cabinet is stocked, and he pulls out one of Gil’s favorites.

Meanwhile, the cop is sitting quietly on the sofa. That’s one of the best things about Gil. He knows when to push and when to wait. Malcolm brings him a glass and takes his own seat on the other end of the sofa. 

“Beautiful stuff,” Gil comments, downing the shot. “You definitely have taste, kid.”

Malcolm half smiles. “You can credit that one to my mother. She brought it over, said you liked it.”

Gil gives him a look. “Good to know, but not what we’re here about.” Malcolm nods, not really surprised that his feeble attempt at redirection has failed. Gil isn’t that easily distracted, not even when the topic is his beloved Jessica Whitly. 

“Talk to me,” Gil says simply. “I haven’t seen you this quiet in I don’t know how long.”

Malcolm stares down at the amber contents of his glass. “I—didn’t stay out of it, Gil. I lost objectivity.”

“Well, I expect so,” Gil answers drily. “Your father was a witness and a participant in the investigation. Nobody would have stayed detached under those circumstances.”

“No,” Malcolm shakes his head, pained. “You know me. You know I have an allowable level of being—connected—to Dr. Whitly for the sake of solving cases. I’m not a robot.”

“So what changed things? That group therapy session?”

Malcolm shakes his head. “That was—intense, but it was a rehash of everything we’ve already said to each other. Nothing new there. I’ll concede I got upset, but only as much as I have a hundred times before.”

“Okay,” Gil answers. “You’re not making this easy. What’s wrong, kid?”

“He was—he was standing in front of me in the basement at Claremont, Gil. Right there, and I had to handcuff him.”

“Who, your father?”

“The Surgeon.” Malcolm tries to create distance in his own mind by using the title. “I did something I said I would never do again, in my life.”

In the middle of his thoughts, Malcolm feels Gil’s hand on his shoulder, warm and solid. “Go on.”

“I—hugged him, Gil, and I let him hug me.”

The hand stays put. “All right, and how did that make you feel?”

“Good,” Malcolm spits out, disgusted by the memory of his own feelings. “Like something I was missing since the night you arrested him.”

“Good, kid,” Gil answers, pulling his hand back but angling closer to Malcolm on the sofa. “I’m glad you took the opportunity.”

“Good?” Malcolm looks up, baffled. “I hugged a man who murdered twenty-three innocent people.” 

“You hugged your father, Malcolm, something you’ve needed for a long time. No need to analyze it to death the way you usually do. Just let the kid in you have this one, maybe?”

“Gil, I have you, my mom, Ainsley, the team. I shouldn’t still need him.”

“None of us is your father. And no matter what he’s done, that’s what he’s always going to be.”

Malcolm nods. “You’re right. But I still feel guilty. Other people deserve to be needed. He doesn’t.”

“If love was about deserving, we would all be alone,” Gil answers. “I’m not suggesting you make a habit of it, but you haven’t done anything you should feel badly about.”

“Thanks, Gil,” Malcolm answers softly. It doesn’t fix all the torment in his mind, but it’s a start. “You have a way of simplifying things until they’re less—insurmountable.”

Gil half smiles. “Remember that next time we butt heads over a case.” He gets up. “I’ll let you unwind, kid.”

Malcolm sees him out, and as they walk to the door, Gil puts a hand on Malcolm’s neck with a light squeeze, the gesture of comfort he has used since Malcolm was small. “Good night, kid.”

“Night, Gil.”

Malcolm runs water into Gil’s empty glass and thinks back to the cop’s words, simple words that had somehow lifted an enormous weight off him. 

“None of us is your father.” 

That’s the one phrase that gives him pause, because if somebody says that while he’s patiently comforting you for the thousandth time, it suggests that he’s disproving his own words. Malcolm sets the upturned glass on the counter to dry and touches the back of his neck, feeling a calloused hand and the warmth of a lifetime of memories. It might be true that no one can replace the biological bond he shares with Martin Whitly, but there are a million other ways to be a father.


	2. Unconditional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Gil’s lectures should feel bad, but instead they feel like that precinct blanket—a little rough to the touch, but warm, safe, and comforting. They’re proof that somebody still cares enough to get frustrated.

“My boy!” The Surgeon’s eyes glisten with pride. Malcolm can’t see them, but he knows exactly how they must look. His stomach turns.

“I’m proud of you, son! You’re doing whatever it takes.” The over-enunciated inflection makes Malcolm’s skin crawl. He gets off the phone as quickly as he can extract the information he needs. 

Happy place. He needs to visualize, to snap his brain out of Surgeon fog so he can keep working. 

He thinks of a few hours earlier. Dingy precinct, wet clothes. Wrapped in a blanket. Gil scolding him. It does the trick. 

For years, Martin’s incessant praise has disgusted Malcolm, a verbal lead weight he can’t shake because his father refuses to stop putting it on him. The words of a manipulator, a gilded knife.

Maybe Gil’s lectures should feel bad, but instead they feel like that precinct blanket—a little rough to the touch, but warm, safe, and comforting. They’re proof that somebody still cares enough to get frustrated. 

At 30 and more, Malcolm didn’t expect this, not after Gil’s loss. He’d moved back with just a shred of hope, only to find that, once again, Gil could surprise him. 

The first scolding had felt like the first hug. There was little difference. They both made Malcolm feel safer than years of FBI training and a weapon ever had. Safe and looked after and parented. Things he hadn’t thought he would find from Gil again at his age and after years away, but things he would never refuse.

“Some imperatives never go away, and we keep craving what we need, even if we don’t realize it.” His own words play back to him, words he’d once said to a woman during his psychological practicals in college. She’d found her biological mother as an adult and was dismayed to find out how deeply she still craved her love and approval. 

Malcolm had expected something to be different when he came back. After all, he had finished university, graduate degrees, Quantico. He had helped some people and put others away. He’d become a man.

Finding that neither Martin nor Gil had changed much at all was a strange thing. After more than a year, Malcolm realized he probably hadn’t changed as much as he’d thought, either. Maybe Martin feared him—and his independence—just a little more, and maybe Gil treated him a shade more like a peer, but all of that could, and did, vanish in intense moments.

He remembers the first time Gil ever got onto him, at least he thinks it was the first time. A year had passed since his father’s arrest, the months when he’d been closed into himself and then the months when he’d come back out. Gil had been in all of them. 

This particular day, Gil had come to pick him up in the middle of an argument between Malcolm and his mother. “Please, take him,” Jessica had said. “I don’t know what do with him today.”

Gil had agreed and taken him to the car, but as soon as he was buckled in, the lecture started. “Malcolm, you do not speak to your mother that way. If you’re upset, you act civil about it, and you talk it out like you do with me. You show respect.”

Malcolm had stayed in a silent huff for a while, but what he’d learned that day was that Gil Arroyo did not consider trauma a valid excuse for bad behavior. He would come to deeply appreciate this, because, where other people saw a hopeless victim and held no expectations, Gil saw potential, and he continually expected and believed Malcolm could reach it. Of course, being Gil, he still had open arms and an open door even when Malcolm failed. 

Gil is not perfect, as Malcolm is well aware, but he would rather be told off by Gil ten times than complimented by the Surgeon once. It all comes down to intention. Dr. Whitly praises so he can gain control, just one more weapon in his arsenal of manipulation. Gil gets onto him because he cares, and everyone who has ever worked with him has known that. 

Malcolm remembers his twenty-first birthday vividly. He’d visited Gil and Jackie, playfully brandishing his driver’s license. “I’m an adult now,” he’d said. “No more lectures.” Jackie had just laughed, but Gil had looked at him like he had three heads. 

“I’ll stop getting onto you when you stop needing it, kid,” he’d said.

When you stop needing it. Malcolm had been away for years, and those years had taught him to be thankful for the telling-offs he pretended to hate. The FBI didn’t tell you off; they just fired you. Girlfriends just left. Friends moved on to find somebody less complicated. Nothing in the world was unconditional. He’d learned how much he needed it.

Moving back to New York, seeing Martin again, had opened him back up to a world of toxic affirmation. Pride in the wrong things, encouragement of the darkest parts of himself, triggering reminders of his childhood, when his father’s gentle affection had so often been laced with disturbing images and unsettling lessons. 

Gil’s very Gil-like resumption of treating Malcolm just like he always had felt like exactly the antidote needed to neutralize Dr. Whitly’s sickly-sweet poison, just as it had been throughout Malcolm’s adolescence. He’d found that he still needed parenting, but not of the Martin Whitly take-your-kid-to-murder-day variety. He still needed somebody unconditional enough to say, “You’re wrong, but I’m still here.” Malcolm couldn’t even say that to himself, half of the time. 

So he visualizes the lecture he’d pretended to mind getting but hadn’t actually minded at all, and then he squares his shoulders and gets ready to solve his case. The irony isn’t lost on him, the fact that one man’s belief in him makes him feel like he’s worthless, while being scolded by the other feels like assurance that he matters after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided not to leave this as a one-shot and to include ideas or scenes that don’t specifically fit in my other stories, related to Martin & Gil & the way they influence Malcolm and contrast with each other. 
> 
> This chapter may seem dull to other people, but I love analyzing Malcolm’s fascinating brain and his vulnerable emotional core.


End file.
